The Lost and Wandering
by Brunette
Summary: That anxious tension was gripping him again, too suddenly. The need to feel wanted - to really feel wanted. It was gripping him again. [one-shot]


_**Author's Note.** I know I've been MIA; I got all writer's block-y with my stories here, and then had a sudden burst of inspiration for an original piece, so I've been working like a crazy person on that. I keep trying to come back to stuff here, but I just have no ideas (I even kinda/sorta started the next chapter of _Someone Like You_. Remember that story?). But this one-shot hit me, and I thought, "Eh, why not?"_

_**Disclaimer:** The characters of _The Mummy_ and _The Mummy Returns_ are the property of Universal Studios. _

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**The Lost and Wandering**

She had the wide, desperate eyes of an orphan puppy, dark and sad, flitting everywhere about the smoky bar. She had her purse clutched between her hands, her knuckles flexing white against the gold clasp, and her bright red lips were forced into a kind of grimacing smile. Her dress was too nice, her hair was too short, and she flinched against every curious eye who found her standing there in the middle of the room like an expensive but mismatched piece of furniture. The red sheen of a sunburn was unmistakable across her forehead and cheekbones, and marked her as a tourist beyond any hope for doubt. She glanced from grim face to grim face, pathetic and hopeful, and somewhere across the bar, Beni Gabor gave the man beside him a nudge.

"Hey, O'Connell. Check it out."

Every now and then a tourist ended up wandering into this particular seedy bar, or any other like it; such places as can only be found by the lost and wandering. That was probably how Beni found the bar, a couple years ago when he arrived in Cairo - confused and disoriented, with no way out but further in. He supposed he still hadn't found his way out yet.

O'Connell grunted and gave a half-hearted glance in the direction Beni indicated, but he straightened immediately when he saw the woman in her fluttery yellow dress, desperately asking for someone who spoke English. Before Beni had a chance to make any of the mean little jabs he'd collected in his mind, O'Connell was standing up swiftly from his seat.

"C'mon," he said.

Beni didn't want to c'mon. But O'Connell grabbed him by his collar and hauled to him his feet, a whiny protest hanging halfway out his mouth. He stumbled along behind O'Connell's long, determined strides, fumbling for a little bit of dignity before they reached the woman. Beni knew she wasn't even going to notice him there beside the tall, dashing American when O'Connell swooped in to her rescue - but he'd rather not be the guy tripping over his own feet like an idiot, just the same.

"Excuse me," Rick said, jerking Beni to a halt in front of the startled young woman. Beni spat a few curses under his breath and regained his composure as best he could after two vodkas and a sudden drag across the bar.

The woman turned and gazed up at him with those worried dark eyes, and her entire face relaxed with something like relief. Beni could have sworn she had tears collecting in her dark lashes just hearing his American accent. And he rolled his eyes because she hadn't even noticed him yet, anyway.

"Oh, thank heavens!" she whispered, just under her breath.

Rick offered her a friendly smile. "You're looking a little lost."

"Oh, I am lost," she said. "So very lost. I got turned around somewheres...I don't rightly know where...Anyway, I wound up here and I reckon you the first person I seen in nigh on three hours that can speak a lick 'a English."

Beni glanced at Rick, puzzled. "Why is she talking like that?"

O'Connell's mouth maintained a smile, but his eyes flitted over to Beni's in irritation. "She's Southern."

"What does that even mean?"

The woman cleared her throat and they both turned their attention back to her.

"Begging your pardon, gentlemen, but if I might interrupt - it's getting dreadful late and I got folks sure to be missing me..."

O'Connell smiled again, and Beni let out a bored sigh, hating the excited little hitch in her breath at the mere sight of that handsome expression.

"Of course," he said. "We'll get ya back to your hotel, alright?"

She breathed another sigh of relief and managed to wrench one hand free of her purse to put on his arm. "Oh, thank you, sir! I promise your kindness will not go unrewarded."

O'Connell was probably shuffling excuses about how she didn't need to give them anything, but Beni wasn't paying any attention. She had a marquis-cut diamond as long as the first knuckle of her finger, and that was all the more motivation he needed to tag along on Rick's little Good Samaritan venture.

"Now, sir, I insist. I done nothing but stand here looking like a deer in the headlights, praying to the good Lord he'd send me somebody to help, and here you come."

Rick shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. "Alright, but...uh, it's Rick. You don't have to call me...sir..."

She gave him a glittering smile. "Rick it is, then. I'm Miss Mary Arden Williams - you're allowed to call me Arden, honey, that's what everybody does. So many gal-darn Marys every place!"

"I'm Beni," he volunteered as they started towards the door, Arden looping her arm through Rick's like they were on their way to a formal dance.

She barely flitted a glance back at him, a mischievous little smirk in the corner of her mouth. She nudged Rick with her elbow. "So why does _he_ talk like that?"

Rick chuckled, "Ya know, nobody's been able to figure that out yet."

Arden giggled, and Beni threw back at them, "I'm Hungarian, asshole."

Her giggles ended abruptly, and Arden pulled Rick to a halt, whirling around to glare at Beni. "Now I do not appreciate that manner of speaking, sir, and I will not tolerate it. You gonna come along, you gonna talk like a gentleman, ya hear?"

Beni balked, staring back at her in shocked perplexity for moment before she turned on her heel and walked right out the door Rick had opened for her. O'Connell stifled a snort.

"What are you laughing at?" Beni demanded. "You are just lucky I was the one who swore first."

Rick shrugged his big shoulders easily, striding outside behind Arden. Grumbling a sigh, Beni trotted along behind them. The chill had already come on, and Beni hugged his threadbare coat tighter about him. It was very dark in that neighborhood, with few streetlamps and a wan moon to boot, and all he could do was hurry along behind O'Connell and Arden, staring at the black seams running up the back of her stockings in mild interest. She had nice legs, but if they were going to be opening for anyone that night, it'd be for O'Connell. Or her husband. More likely her husband, given the size of her ring. Beni supposed his presence ruined any hope for O'Connell earning a breathless tryst in an alleyway with this over-grateful debutante.

So there was another reason to stick around.

He watched Arden side-step a broken bottle, leaning obviously into Rick as she did.

"I'm stayin' at Cleopatra's Temple, honey. Do you know it?"

Rick shrugged his shoulders. "Sure. I know it."

"It's positively divine. You know there's a zebra head hanging over my bed? It's a sight to see. But my fiancé, he got him a hippo over his - "

So she was engaged, not married. And her fiancé wasn't even staying in the same room with her. Even in a foreign country where they could easily pose as Mr. and Mrs. Anybody. Beni snickered to himself, and snuck a glance at the back of Rick's head, wondering if his spirits had been dampened at all by this new information. Because certainly Miss Mary Arden Williams wouldn't be offering the kinds of rewards he preferred, if she wouldn't even do such things for the man she was going to marry.

Because that was the thing about O'Connell, though he made a big show of pretending like it wasn't. That was his whole thing. Rick didn't mind being poor, or eating bland food, or wearing the same clothes day after day. O'Connell didn't mind those things the way Beni minded. Beni wanted desperately to be rich - to have closets of expensive suits and live in a palace and gorge himself on steak and wine. But O'Connell...O'Connell was perfectly content to live like an average nobody as long as he had female company.

He had more balls than brains. Beni usually got hurt when he said so aloud, but it was true. Rick had repeatedly put himself in harm's way because of a woman, and not always because it was some noble quest of do-goodery. Oh, sure, today he was the big hero, leading this helpless Southern flower out of the wrong side of town because it was "the right thing to do." But tomorrow he would be risking his neck just to stick it to some British aristocrat's wife. He would do just about any stupid thing if he thought he had a chance of getting in bed with a woman. O'Connell didn't see it that way; he probably didn't even realize that was why he did it. But Beni saw.

He saw...but he didn't really get it.

Beni liked women as much as the next man, and he liked sex, too - as much as anyone. But he didn't like having to pay for it (which he usually had to do), and he didn't like putting in the effort that went into finding a woman drunk and desperate enough to be charmed into going to bed with him, either, especially when it was rarely a sure thing. He much preferred the idea of getting obscenely rich, and collecting beautiful gold diggers that way.

Sometimes it hit him with a fury, though - unexpected and overpowering. Sometimes it hit him, and afterwards he'd discover he'd spent all of his money on a beautiful call girl when a homely streetwalking drug addict would have sufficed (and for a fraction of the cost, too). Sometimes it hit him - the overwhelming need to feel wanted; to _actually_ feel wanted, even if it was just a big expensive show.

O'Connell must have felt that way all the time.

Though women _did_ want O'Connell. They always did. And not just temporarily, either. They didn't just want his hands on them - they wanted his name and his children and a ring he bought just for them, even if it was shabby. _God_, how they wanted him.

When Beni was seventeen he'd gotten one of the girls in the tenement house in trouble. Her name was Eszti and she had wide hips and a lazy eye. She slept with him because she was homely and chubby, and girls like that will do anything for a boy who gives them a bit of attention. He'd gotten her in trouble, but it didn't matter. _It's over now, Beni, but I wanted you to know you got me in trouble. I took care of it, but I don't want to see you anymore. _Even Eszti thought she could do better than his name and his children.

But she wouldn't have thrown Rick O'Connell's child away, would she? She would have grasped onto that like a lifesaver; she and every other woman who happened to catch the glimmer of O'Connell's smile.

Surely he could see how they wanted him.

"...And they just sure they gonna find all manner 'a treasure out in that desert. They just _sure_ of it. I said to him, Bernard, honey, ain't nothing out there but graves and dried up old corpses. Gives me the creeps. I said, honey, you know the reason everybody make such a fuss over Mr. Carter is that it's so unusual, but he won't listen to me, not with his friends around..."

Rick chuckled. "So, uh, I take it you aren't gonna go digging for treasure with them?"

Arden laughed, "Oh, heavens no, honey! I just got a manicure. And I ain't gonna go sleep out in the sand like a heathen. We don't mind things hot in Georgia, but I'd rather be where there's a fan, just the same."

Beni watched her lean a little closer to him, and gaze up with her dark eyes, and whisper, "What about you, honey, you like things hot?"

Rick's body tensed, and he might have cast a glance back at Beni, but probably not. This wasn't the first time a woman had made a bold suggestion while Beni was hanging around like a droning fly.

"I think I like things cool," he said slowly, low in his throat the way Rick could.

Arden didn't lean away from him. "Well I can fix you up an ice cold bourbon when we get to my hotel."

Beni rolled his eyes. He didn't have to be listening to know Rick agreed. He always agreed. A beautiful woman was to Rick what a sizable sum of cash was to Beni - tantalizing and irresistible and gone, much too soon.

Beni stopped walking, and they didn't even notice. He stopped and reached into his pocket for a cigarette, and leaned against the crumbling building behind him. He watched them disappear into the darkness, an irritable grimace on his face as he took his first drag off the cigarette.

It was cold and dark, and he was too far from the bar to want to go back. But he hardly wanted to go all the way to the wealthy tourist district, tagging along with Rick and Arden, either. He leaned there grumbling to himself, feeling like a lonely ghost in an abandoned, overgrown graveyard. The buildings around him rose like the disfigured remains of forgotten headstones, and the smell of his cigarette smoke reminded him of death, though he wasn't sure why.

He was the only person in that corner of town, or at least he thought so, sucking nervously on the end of a cigarette and thinking about how he could drop dead right here, and no one would ever know. No one would ever care. He was there, alone and unwanted, and that anxious tension was gripping him again, too suddenly.

He glanced across the vacant street and thought he noticed the glint of eyes in the opposite alleyway. He squinted and he was sure he did. He puffed on his cigarette and watched a thin, desperate form slink out into the lighter darkness of the street. A thin desperate form in a thin, used dress - someone's old nightgown, perhaps, stained and threadbare but still soft, perhaps. Still slick and soft...

She made her way over, different in every conceivable way from Arden; long, wild hair and dark skin, unclean and unmemorable. All of her different, except for the eyes. She had the same wide and dark and desperate eyes, as alone and frightened as Arden had been in the wrong side of town, before Rick O'Connell swooped to her rescue.

She came right up to him, and stood before him in a nightgown he could almost see through, and stared at him with those eyes.

"You look for good time?" she asked him in broken English.

That anxious tension was gripping him again, too suddenly. The need to feel wanted - to really feel wanted. It was gripping him again.

He said, "Alright. If you are good to me."

Relief came over her face, and she nodded her head, and he knew she was probably just desperate to get back to the nearest opium den. She probably was. But he wasn't going to think about that.

"I will be good...er to you...than any..."

She wouldn't be, but she would do. She would do until he was a millionaire and wanted by beautiful women all over the world. Wanted by everyone, the way rich people are always wanted. She could sate the unwantedness a little bit, for a little while; the unwantedness Rick O'Connell only thought he felt. But Beni felt it all the time, every waking moment.

It was just that, every now and then, it would overtake him.

**end.**


End file.
